Featured Domains

Paul Mockapetris, inventor of the domain name system, visits with DNW in its 100th podcast.

This week we’re celebrating 100 episodes of the DNW podcast, and what better way to do it than have Paul Mockapetris as our guest. Paul invented the domain name system back in the 80s. On this episode, he talks about the early days, new uses for DNS, and security. Also, a recap of the news from past week including Frank Schilling sparking a busy day for Rightside, .Shop’s launch and more.

New top level domain name company Radix is adding redundancy to its DNS.

The company has contracted with Dyn to be its second DNS services provider, running concurrently with Radix’s back-end registry services provider CentralNic (AIM:CNIC).

A Radix representative told Domain Name Wire that it wasn’t having problems with CentralNic, but wanted to have redundancy in case there was a problem. CentralNic and Dyn are each handling 50% of the traffic.

Radix operates domain names such as .online, .site and .tech. 1.4 million domain names have been registered across Radix’s portfolio generating over 180 million daily DNS requests.

In the wake of earthquakes in Haiti, the country’s top level domain name remains functional with some limitations, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers reported on its blog today.

The ability to access the country’s top level domain name .HT is important for communication during the crisis. ICANN reports:

-Administrators of the .ht domain name are “alive and well”.

-Some of the name servers for .ht are not reachable from outside Haiti due to damage to the telecommunications infrastructure.

-.HT continues to function through a number of sites outside Haiti, and the country’s name server partners are taking precautions to make sure access continues should the situation in Haiti deteriorate.

In its blog post, ICANN underscores the importance of an operating domain name system during a crisis:

Functioning telecommunications can make a real difference in recovering from a major natural disaster. The naming and numbering infrastructure is just a small piece of this, but we want to be sure it continues to function so that is not the obstacle that prevents people communicating.

U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) questions future of DNS management.

ICANN’s Joint Project Agreement (JPA) with the U.S. government ends in September, and already countries around the world are asking that control of the domain name system be pulled from the U.S. There are sure to be big battles ahead.

NTIA is seeking public comment (pdf) on ICANN and the termination of the JPA. In reality, ICANN would have to agree to a continuation of its agreement with the U.S. Government. Its senior staff have made every indication that they don’t plan to extend this and that it will go out on its own after September. The U.S. government, on the other hand, is questioning whether ICANN is even the ideal model for managing the DNS. It is questioning, ever-so-lightly, if ICANN should be scrapped in favor of an alternative.

Internet Commerce Association (ICA) provides some good analysis of the current situation on its web site:

Of course, the JPA is a contract and it takes two willing parties to enter into one. The NOI notes that top ICANN staff have repeatedly stated that the JPA will conclude this fall, which raises the possibility of a heads-on confrontation with international political ramifications in September should the U.S. conclude that ICANN is not ready to graduate and ICANN responds that it is unwilling to enter into a new JPA. The most intriguing questions posed by DOC may be the ones that hint it is willing to entertain the possibility of scrapping the ICANN experiment and instituting an entire new model of DNS governance.

Should ICANN be scrapped? I don’t think so. It needs to be reformed before it’s cut loose, but scrapping it altogether would create chaos. As ICA reminds us, “Better the devil you know than the one you
don’t.”

My best guess is that ICANN and the U.S. government will come to a face-saving agreement. It keeps ICANN intact, cuts some of the thread between the two, but still gives the U.S. arms-length control over DNS.